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Maternity Leave and Meternity - Not even close

Every once in a while a woman comes along, hopping around, flipping hair and flashing manicured nails and spouting off about the dumbest shit in the world, and all you can think is “You’re the type that makes women look stupid.”

Enter Meghann Foye, a woman who has written a book and spoken on the topic of “Meternity.” It’s like maternity leave, but without the baby. You know for single people without babies because it’s not fair that only people who have babies get all this time off.

I’ll let that sink in for a minute.

According to Ms. Foye, taking maternity leave is a wonderful time that allows women to reflect on

Spend vacation hooked up to this every 3 hours. It's fun!

life, learn to advocate for themselves and their family, and generally recharge.

You moms seeing red yet?

I’m not sure about everyone else’s experience, but I went into labor at night, was emailing my boss from the hospital before they wheeled me into an operating room to cut me open, pulled everything out, including two babies, and put everything back together. I then spent three days in the hospital, and came home to a constant cycle of nursing, pumping, diapers, crying, bodily fluids, no sleep, more nursing, more crying (it may or may not have been me), lots of bleeding, and some more pumping. There was also that whole healing thing I had to do since I had what amounts to a major abdominal surgery. I managed to fit some of that in as well. At week six I left my twins to go back to work because my husband and I really felt that living indoors was important and we needed the money of my full salary.

A few weeks later I took my first business trip and was gone from them for two nights and was introduced to the wonderful world of pumping while traveling.

How I started my "vacation" (This is not me).

Sounds awesome right? Still want a maternity leave? Did I mention they didn’t sleep through the night for 13 months? What about pumping at work? That’s a lot of fun and not at all awkward as you sit in a meeting that’s running late and pray you don’t start leaking because your boobs feel like painful rocks strapped to your chest.

About the only thing that I came off my maternity leave realizing was that I didn’t want to travel as much and I wanted to make more money, and I felt like that before I had two kids ripped from my abdomen. So you know what I did? I got a different job.

Screw you and your “meternity.” You want time off, save up your PTO, or take and unpaid leave of absence. That’s pretty much like a maternity leave. Time off without pay. Sounds awesome, right? Also, why should only women get this? Don’t men need to soul search and figure out what deep meaning things they have to do with their lives? Hopefully it’s not write silly books about shit they don’t understand.

As for advocating for yourself, that’s a skill you can get without having kids or taking sabbatical, and doesn’t require soul searching. It’s called being confident and assertive. Figure it out. Men and women can both do it. Believe in yourself and the job you’re doing and then figure out how to get what you want. If your current company won’t accommodate find another job. It’s not easy, and it takes balls, but you can do it without vacation or pushing a baby out of your lady parts.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I should probably figure out what work I’ll be taking home this weekend since I leave on time every day in an effort to see my kids.